A few thousand people in a stadium, shooting foam at each other

On December 26, 2015, tornadoes went through Rowlett and Garland and took houses off their foundations a few minutes from where I live. The blaster battle was supposed to be a one-off fundraiser. Money went to the Rebuild Rowlett Foundation and the Garland Tornado Relief Fund, and every blaster left on the field afterward went to Buckner Children's Home.

Then it kept happening. For its first several years it ran as Jared's Epic NERF Battle, which is still the name on the Guinness World Records certificate and the reason so much of the early coverage calls it the world's largest Nerf battle. We took it to Indianapolis and raised money for Riley Hospital for Children, and somewhere in there it turned into something that fills stadiums built for football, with a ten-year sponsorship from Playview behind it. It is still the same idea it was the first time, which is that a very large number of people throwing foam at each other is a perfectly reasonable way to raise money.